This story of his opposition to a bill that would have protected infants born alive after an abortion attempt while a state senator is starting to get legs. Prior to Saddlesore the other night, I had not heard much about it. And of course the story is much more complex than my knee-jerk post headline. I would imagine that given the proper spin, this story is going to be hard to 'splain away.<br><br>Obama's Abortion Distortion <br><br>"IN MARCH 2003, registered nurse Jill Stanek submitted a statement to the Illinois Senate Health and Human Services committee in which she reported that infants who survived abortions at her Oak Lawn hospital were sometimes "taken to the Soiled Utility Room and left alone to die." Stanek was lobbying the committee to approve the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002, which would have recognized any infant born alive after an abortion as a human being deserving legal protection. Barack Obama, then the committee chairman, defeated the bill with his fellow Democrats in a 6-4 party-line vote.<br><br>Obama's campaign website offers two reasons why the senator opposed the bill in 2003. First, the website claims that Obama did not support the state legislation because it lacked language "clarifying that the act would not be used to undermine Roe vs. Wade." The website cites Obama's assertion that he would have supported the similar federal born-alive bill, which included language clarifying that it would not undermine Roe v. Wade when it unanimously passed the Senate in 2001.<br><br>In fact, the federal legislation and the final version of the Illinois senate bill were essentially the same. On Monday, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) released documents that showed that the Illinois senate committee unanimously approved an amendment that made the state legislation almost identical to the federal legislation. The amendment provided that the act should not be "construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any<br>member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive'". This was the precise language of the federal bill Obama thought to be a sufficient protection of Roe v. Wade.<br>The other reason Obama opposed the bill, according to his website, is that the "born alive principle was already the law in Illinois." An existing 1975 law is cited as proof that new legislation was unnecessary.<br><br>Illinois state senator Dale Righter, the ranking Republican on the 2003 Health and Human Services Committee, says Obama did not raise that concern at the hearing: "There was no discussion of anything like that." Democratic state senator Susan Garrett similarly says she did not remember the 1975 law being raised during the hearing.<br><br>Obama's campaign did not return a phone call asking for a response to Righter's claim.<br><br>In any case, the 1975 law does not apply to non-viable infants born alive. According to Paul Linton, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, the 2003 bill was a response to the question, "What duties are owed to a non-viable child born alive?" The bill sought to guarantee comfort care for non-viable infants similar to the care that would be provided to any terminally ill adult. "Many of these babies lived for hours after birth," Susan T. Muskett, legislative counsel at the NRLC, writes in an email. "Are these babies medical waste, or persons protected by the Constitution? Obama's reaction was to consider them non-entities under Roe v. Wade until they were 'viable,' even when they were gasping outside the mother."<br><br><br>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>I would imagine that given the proper spin, this story is going to be hard to 'splain away.<p><hr></blockquote><p>I imagine that those who give this issue top priority really wouldn't be voting for him an any case -- so, not sure if it would even be worth his time to try to 'splain something he's already 'splained once to an audience who no doubt wouldn't accept his 'splanation anyway ...<br><br>Turn up the signal, wipe out the noise ...

Obama's response to the accusation<br><br>Brody: Real quick, the born alive infant protection act. I gotta tell you that's the one thing I get a lot of emails about and it's just not just from Evangelicals, it about Catholics, Protestants, main -- they're trying to understand it because there was some literature put out by the National Right to Life Committee. And they're basically saying they felt like you misrepresented your position on that bill.<br><br>Obama: Let me clarify this right now.<br><br>Brody: Because it's getting a lot of play.<br><br>Obama: Well and because they have not been telling the truth. And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying. I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported - which was to say --that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born - even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion. That was not the bill that was presented at the state level. What that bill also was doing was trying to undermine Roe vs. Wade. By the way, we also had a bill, a law already in place in Illinois that insured life saving treatment was given to infants.<br><br>So for people to suggest that I and the Illinois medical society, so Illinois doctors were somehow in favor of withholding life saving support from an infant born alive is ridiculous. It defies commonsense and it defies imagination and for people to keep on pushing this is offensive and it's an example of the kind of politics that we have to get beyond. It's one thing for people to disagree with me about the issue of choice, it's another thing for people to out and out misrepresent my positions repeatedly, even after they know that they're wrong. And that's what's been happening.<br><br><br><br><br>......<br><br><br>Wondering if threads should be started with titles:<br><br>Why does McCain want to kill Veterans?<br>Why does McCain want to kill your sons & daughters?<br>Why McCain want to kill ...<br><br><br>

This is so inflamatory , Robert.<br><br>How about if we put up one: <br>"Why GW Bush and Cheney like to kill our troops in Iraq by starting a phony war with a bunch of LIES !" <br><br>Think that's accurate ?<br><br>David (OFI)

Here's more on pro-life activist Jill Stanek , the one mojo posts as smacking down Obama. <br><br><br><br>"But given that the bottom line is that the bill has only passed when its critics are satisfied that it's utterly meaningless, this doesn't seem like a particularly substantive debate over whether or not he wants to kill living infants.<br><br>The notion that this fight is actually about killing live babies, rather than regulating abortion, seems a bit absurd; however, the website of the Illinois activist who championed the legislation, Jill Stanek, bears that out.<br>It turns out she doesn't just oppose child-murder. Or late-term abortion. Or abortion. She's also against condoms — in Africa. She's raising money for more billboards in Tanzania with the message: "Faithful condom users die."<br><br>.......<br><br>Yes, "Obama the baby killer" is vulgar. And Limbaugh repeats this attack almost daily, so there's a level of desensitization that wingnuts have to calling presidential candidates "baby killers" ... it certainly worked for them in 2004.<br><br><br><br>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>in Africa. She's raising money for more billboards in Tanzania with the message: "Faithful condom users die."<p><hr></blockquote><p>It is this kind of quackery that I cannot stand from a single person or the Pope. What this attitude does is kill by spreading AIDS. It's truly sick.<br><br>

Nice response in the Brody files. Too bad he is lying. Documents that illustrate that the Illinios bill was identical to the federal bill that passed are readily available. And a pesky fact still exists. Obama was one of six to vote No. And the bill died in committee. <br><br><br><br>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>Too bad he is lying.<p><hr></blockquote><p>Over-simplification (surprise! Abortion and politics is a complex dance -- who'd-a-thunk?)<br><br>Read here and here for fairly objective synopses of the issue ... and this assessment form Mr. Sullivan:<br><br>"The critical issue appears to be, per the NYT, whether two sequential bills were presented as a package or not; per Manier, the question relates to previously existing Illinois-specific interpretations of the law protecting fetuses who survive abortions. Neither side seems to me to have a a clear-cut case on this - which suggests that some of the hysteria on this is due to culture war posturing rather than to the details of the matter at hand."<br><br>Turn up the signal, wipe out the noise ...

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